Enterprises are increasingly capturing, storing, and mining a plethora of information related to communications with their customers and related to their day-to-day internal operations. Often this information is stored and indexed within databases. Once the information is indexed, queries are developed on an as-needed basis to mine the information from the database for a variety of organizational goals, such as marketing, planning, reporting, etc.
The information does not always have to be modeled within an enterprise in conventional relational database format. For example, the information may be modeled using object oriented (OO) database technology or even infocube technology.
The data model initially chosen by an enterprise can also change over time as the information management needs of the enterprise change. For example, an enterprise may not have a large amount of information in the beginning stages of its operations and may believe that an infocube model is most beneficial; however, as the enterprise matures the volume of information increases and the infocube model may prove to be impractical for the enterprise to maintain and thus the enterprise may transition to a relational database data model.
When an enterprise transitions from one data model to another, the front-end interfaces associated with the prior data model may include benefits that the enterprise is reluctant to let go of, such as report generating, query processing, etc. Yet, there is little ability to integrate the data access mechanisms associated with one data model with that of another, especially when it relates to the front-end interfaces of the data models. So, enterprises are often forced to relinquish useful applications that they have grown skilled in and have relied upon when the enterprises switch its underlying data model.
Thus, improved techniques for integrating disparate data access mechanisms are desirable.